haiku (2.23.11)

'nother cold morning

dew of the desert grace-land

and frosty shadows

creeping dawn whisper

the immaculate morning

simplicity--

coyotes call cold

echoes long and mournful

down the canyon-

the gone america (2.27.11)

Long gone are the days when a dollar was worth a dollar and a smile was worth so much more. Gone are the days when exchanges of all sorts were simple handshakes and helping hands. Gone are the blacksmiths and bookkeepers, the bank tellers and time keepers. The teenage today is troublesome electronic. Gone are the dusty baseball mitts nestled in garage crates and captive deflating basketballs, gone is that burning youthful desire for dirt roads and back pedal skid stops, pausing to playfully throw rocks at the upstairs windows, with grubby hands holding flashlights behind saggy woodshed walls. The kids are gone and the cans they kicked. The church pews hidden under holding pepsi cans from spilling into berber carpeting, gone musty corridors and steep narrow circular staircases, up towards the white steeple. Gone are the main-street markets and local mechanics with stained fingernails. The neon budweiser blinking in noon, the naked swimming and childish baths with the neighbors. Gone is the naivety, the nonsense, the never mind the world lets wander in the woods until dark comes dank and cold and creeping across the swamp. Some rusted chevy's round headlight chambers swimming in spiderwebs and half sunken, spills treasures from her bed. Gone are the children and their lost childhood. Their sparkling north center swim rafts and slightly rotted deck sections, their slivery moons in backyard campgrounds. Gone with the trees and with the town center dug up and destroyed, some disrespectful notion that new is better and better is moving forward. Gone are the wild grasses of midwest, the wild flowers that'd flourish the foundations for life, the wild life-lust of youth, that yearning for pure adventure. The sunburned youthful forearms and sun bleached hair. The strained dinner calls and quietly washing mud caked bare feet, then falling in dewy grass at the days every end. The cold evening calm and the unexpected knock. Gone chipped paint on the porch rail sinking and slumping into the front yard. Gone is the future of that memory. Made in youthful sleeping bags now tucked musty in the basement, the broken hideout floorboards stubbed toes and splinters, eager eyes between the spindles of some christmas morning. Gone is the wood-stove and the winter and the wishful imagination, the vivid images, the playful pirates stooped in a closet's end under satin stalactites. The endless scenes and gone lost are all of them. The american world is within a world within the world wide web. Why don't we look outside?

12-21-10 (untitled joe pug response)

I am the wandering son, and I am the one who waits. I am the whisper of a cold night, the breeze that brings back autumn, and the burning of midnight youth. I am the friend and the face that, smiling, slips into faded futures. And I am that future, fitting neatly into photographs but still finding ways to fool them. I am the discussion of self that dissolves into summer depths of austin lake. I am lost and I am losing. I am gone without a signature, left without a name. I am no one and I am nothing but closer to meaning than majorities might think. I am thankful and thoughtful but thoroughly unimpressed. I am unsure of the world but with big eyes am beautiful observations. I am between planes, between gods and borrowing time. I am tomorrow and today. I am breaking somebody's laws, breathing their inequalities and back-stepping because of. I am blind but insightful. I am finding new ways to be without, wishing for a ghost, and I am giving everything for a goal intangible, but all the more attainable. I am always and I am never. I am a new forever.

12-18-10

Its raining in california. Its raining in nevada. There's new snow on the peaks above camp and my gear's gone damp overnight. Now its what to do. The dribbling clouds and dusky fogs prevent focus on climbing; the cause and reason for being fixed on the edge of this small town. Not just any one of several thousand across the american heartland. We'd be heros of stone, climbing crusaders, standing atop big boulders, but only if the sun would allow. And two days have passed now since the first snow and the move. Maybe we'll be here forever cooped up in cars avoiding the precipitation and the perspiring ceiling in the back. The cramped quarters caused a spill and a bourbon bottle sip before bed but a cozy escape from a persistent rain. The 72 hr mark a mere two hrs, and the second day of forced rest takes its toll on our team's spirit and temperament. Tomorrow, we hope, the rain will cease, murky mud paths will turn back to their dry cracking desert curves, and the boulders will begin to dry. We'll descend to the gorge and in caves and overhangs discover the extent of damages done by this wretched weather. It watches and listens and drowns out the dark by drumming a steady cadence on the cab roof. It has wrecked attempts at drying anything and discouraged our regular outdoor cooking routine. The reality of what's wet and dry is as blurred a line as the distant Bishop light-specked horizon, seen through a heavily fogged front windshield. I wonder what the american majority would do if plucked from plush couches and crudely placed into this predicament. Perhaps nothing different. The drought of their living room made most definitely more apparent and an acceptance of another lifestyle forced. But the future won't have me comfortable in the suburban, nor will it have them carrying on in my footsteps. For this life, this wandering existence, this everyday on the outskirts of society, and operating on the edges of a “regular” routine, is not for everyone. Yet everyone should at least extend an arm, an ear, an eye into the worlds of the others. Because without being witness to both contradicting and corresponding views, we could loose our very grasp on the importance of life. There's lots to experience, even never ending amounts, and if eagerness to indulge is lost then also is everything. Everyday becomes a meaningless monotony if not made the most of. Finding and focusing on the beautiful differences of every day, on a daily basis, is essential. Always embracing change, both the major and the miniscule, because there's more new in today than time in the universe, take hold and enjoy.